GE Global Research, the technology development arm of the General Electric Company today announced that scientists have transformed a common and commercially available GE sensor for home security into an innovative, ntelligent wireless medical sensing platform. If successful, this new platform could ramatically improve neonatal and home patient monitoring.

GE researchers have developed sophisticated signal processing algorithms for a wireless sensor that can classify different types of motion and closely monitor a person’s breathing and heart rate. This type of sensor could have advantages in monitoring premature babies in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Premature infants have very sensitive and fragile skin, which can make it difficult to directly attach sensors to them. GE’s new sensor could wirelessly monitor an infant’s movements, including breathing and heart rate. Similarly, this sensor could be installed in a home for elder care or other outpatient monitoring. The research is being done through a grant from the National Institute of Justice’s (NIJ) Sensors and Surveillance Group, which is leading a program to develop new security sensing solutions that can more effectively monitor prisoners in correctional facilities. Jeffrey Ashe, an electrical engineer at GE Global Research and the Principal Investigator on the sensing project, said, “We have essentially built a more sophisticated brain for an existing GE sensor that can tell whether someone is moving or motionless and whether an individual is breathing or not breathing. One of the most promising applications of this new technology could be in neonatal infant health monitoring. We have seen considerable interest from the medical community in having this type of wireless sensing capability to monitor the well-being of infants under intensive care.” Ashe, added, “GE’s sensing technology could enable new applications in elder and outpatient care as well by enabling remote monitoring of the health and well-being of a patient and loved one.”